[oofabz]

One area where we lag behind the rest of the world is our voting system. In 1992 Clinton was elected with 43% of the vote because Perot split the Republicans. In 2000 Bush was elected with 48% because Nader split the Democrats.

This kind of voting system has been mathematically proven to create a two-party system (Duverger's Law). In many other countries they use runoff voting, so if no one gets 50%, they hold another round of voting with the top two candidates. This way you can vote for whoever you want without worrying about letting the wrong guy win. And it works - check out these numbers from France's 2012 election:

- 29% Hollande - 27% Sarkozy - 18% Le Pen - 11% Melenchon - 9% Bayrou

That could never happen in America. Our voting system is rigged to favor the Republicans and the Democrats. It's like choosing between DSL and cable - one may be better than the other but they both suck. How much brighter would our future be if we had more choices?

[ubernostrum]

One thing I've never seen answered:

Has anyone actually stopped to figure out how multi-party systems really scale? India is the largest in the world, but also A) has Euro-style population density and B) is maybe not such a great example of a functioning representative government. France and Germany are better examples of governments that mostly work, but are dealing with a fraction of the US population and order-of-magnitude differences in density and geographic area compared to the US.

And, tellingly, what I know of French and German politics is basically that, while in theory there are a bunch of parties and there are places where they can pick up a seat or two... they're still two-party in the sense that they tend to develop stable, long-lived pairs of large dominant parties, who in turn are the only ones with a shot at forming a government. Every once in a while a third party gets just big enough to play kingmaker, but that's about it. And that doesn't sound like enough of a sweeping change to justify rebooting the entire system.

[oofabz]

France and Germany are not so two-party. In the 53 years of France's current government, they have elected presidents from four parties. In the 22 years since German reunification, they have had presidents from three parties and one independent.

Meanwhile, in the last 159 years, the US has only had Democrats and Republicans.

Also, even if minor parties do not get elected, they offer healthy competition and keep the main parties on their toes. Candidates in the US hate to present concrete plans or answer specific questions. They only have one opponent, so they take the least controversial stance that will differentiate them against the other guy. Offering more information than this minimum required is bad strategy.

If other parties were in the running, candidates would be forced to take positions and offer plans, because they have to differentiate themselves from several opponents.

I don't think changing how we elect people counts as "rebooting the entire system". We would have to eliminate the electoral college, but who would be against that? It is a relic left over from the days when local election results had to travel on horseback with a trusted messenger.

[randomafrican]

>France and Germany are not so two-party. In the 53 years of France's current government, they have elected presidents from four parties.

It's really two and a half. De Gaulle - Pompidou - Chirac -Sarkozy were part of the same party that morphed and changed names everytime there was a new leader. Miterrand - Hollande are the other. Giscard was a one-term president from a party that has always been a junior partner of Main Right-Center party. So he's the half.

And German presidents don't count. You have to look at the Chancellor. It has been CDU or SDP since 1945 except for nine days. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chancellors_of_Germany

[oofabz]

Does Germany hold runoff elections? It looks like Merkel won in 2009 with only 34% of the vote. If they use the same system that the US does, that is probably why their elections only choose between the main two parties.

[randomafrican]

Actually, the Chancellor is elected by the bundestag and not directly by voters. And yes, it is required that more than half of the bundestag votes for the candidate.

[ubernostrum]

Other comments have covered the France/Germany thing.

I will point out that I'm actually a fan of the electoral college in the present day, and believe it serves a useful purpose.

The quintessential problem in American politics is the different regions of the country, which all have their own set of interests and values. And, in general, people get very upset when they feel they aren't represented at all; for example, I live in the lone county in my state that consistently trends liberal, and I know that my vote effectively doesn't count for anything state-wide or any national election, because I'm surrounded and outnumbered by far more conservative voters. This is frustrating and leads to apathy.

Similarly, when a significant region of the country is effectively disenfranchised in this fashion, serious problems result. And that's what would happen if we replaced the electoral college by direct popular election: a small number of coastal population centers would essentially decide every election, leaving a huge swathe of the country realizing that their votes don't count.

Under the current electoral system, meanwhile, candidates for President have to be responsive to the interests of a broader cross-section of the country in order to get elected. On the whole, I think that's a good thing, because it ensures that we don't end up in a tyranny-of-the-urban-majority situation.

[dmpk2k]

Perhaps we should eliminate parties altogether. The existence of party whips and cabinets in many countries tells us a lot about their "representative" democracies.

[maxerickson]

No matter what you label it, people with like ideas will end up working together.

[dmpk2k]

It's fine if they work together. I just don't think a formalized hierarchy, nor a populace voting for candidates due to their party association, is healthy -- it causes bad distortions, like the threat of political death if a member dares cross the floor.

[maxerickson]

I agree that there are problems with/from hierarchy and single-lever voting, I guess I don't think that it comes from formalized parties. I pretty much end up blaming the voter (I end up reducing a lot of complaints about voting systems to "If this democracy had more rules, people would vote better", which doesn't necessarily make much sense).

It would be interesting to see what resulted from removing affiliation information from ballots.

[randomafrican]

Furthermore, the lack of discipline of US parties has to be taken into consideration. They're basically coalitions in which factions compete for power and influence through primaries and financing while in France everyone knows the minor center-left parties (the Greens for instance) will participate in a coalition led by the Socialist Party. The negociation on the inclusion of this or that topic in the common platform are formal.

[smsm42]

I have lived in a country wil multi-party election system. I am not really sure you'd prefer it to US system if you saw it in action. In multi-party system, one of the "big" wins the elections and then has to bargain with smaller parties to create a ruling coalition. This bargaining usually a completely disgusting process of political horse-trading, where narrow-issue parties wield wildly unproportional influence and extract huge concessions due to their political position. This also happens sometimes on narrow votes in US system, but while in US this is more of an exception, in multi-party state this is the only way to go. What is called "pork barrel spending" in US and seen as something that should be reduced if not eliminated completely in US is the only way to spend in a good multi-party system, because without buying off smaller parties (which are not shy of outright extortion because they have enough votes to hold small but key position and do not fear to look bad because they don't have to woo independents) no law and no budget can ever pass.

I'm not saying any of the systems is best or worst in each case, but multi-party system has as many, if not more, problems than two-party system.

[mseebach]

It's easy to over-emphasize the importance of the voting system. I note how you contrast the badness of winning with 43% and 48% of the vote with a guy who won with 29% of the vote. Yes, you get the run-off, but most of the time, that just degenerates into a free-for-all in the first round and the "real election" between the two "real" parties in the second. You even get the issue of vote-splitting: In 2002, Front National narrowly beat the socialists, so the run-off was between conservative Chirac and far-right Le Pen. Chirac got 20% in the first round and 82% in the second - on a 32%/68% favorable rating.

Voting isn't really about lofty ideals and finding the best person for the job. The presidents of France aren't significantly or consistently better or worse than the presidents of the US. The fact is that across all the voting systems in the free democratic world, the people elected are rarely brilliant and visionary leaders - they are just good enough and there is a solid mechanism for firing them if they screw up badly enough.

[raverbashing]

But in the end, only Hollande and Sarkozy had a chance to win

The runoff system sometimes provides different results in the second round, true. (And you know that it only applies if none of the candidates has more than 50% of valid votes, right?)

[asmithmd1]

Bush the Younger won in 2000 with fewer votes in total than Gore because of the "winner take all" electoral collage system. If you don't live in a swing state basically your vote is not even counted.